PowerTip: See What Update-Help Does on Your System

Summary: Learn how to see what the Update-Help cmdlet does on your system.

How can I see what Update-Help does on my Windows 10 computer—if anything?

Open the Windows PowerShell console with Admin rights, type Update-Help, and add the –Verbose switch. It will list everything that it does, the versions of Help that are current, and which versions are updated. Here is such a command:

For a long time when I started with PowerShell I could not get my help to update when I was at work because of a proxy server, and Windows authentication not passing through transparently as we would expect it to.

If others have the same problem, here’s my solution – which I turned into a cmdlet Update-HelpViaProxy in one of my modules – but all you need are these three lines: